Category Archives: Unique Shopping (stores with some personality)

Buck’s Fifth Avenue, Olympia

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8476851353_b6c04c8f7b_zBuck’s Fifth Avenue is a splendid spice store at 209 5th Ave SE  Olympia, WA 98501. There website says “We have every imaginable spice” and they told me the same thing in the store. They did indeed have a great selection of spices in hand labeled mason jars and apparently they can get anything else. The joy of the store is that all of the dry spices can be sniffed and most smell wonderful. And you can buy a pinch of anything, which is great for recipes with something unusual. Really, I loved the atmosphere of the store and the outstanding customer service. The owner, Anne Buck, said the store had been around for 43 years.

http://www.culinaryexotica.mybigcommerce.com/

Meier’s House of Clocks, Last Day

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8433351565_5b76b54993_bI’ve been meaning to stop at Meier’s House of Clocks at 3730 South M Street for ages and when I heard that they were closing their doors for the last time today I stopped by. There were a bunch of great clocks, as could be expected, but my favorite was the cuckoo clocks. Meier’s has been open since 1953 and at this location for four years. There is a good article on the store here http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/01/30/2455345/longtime-tacoma-store-meiers-house.html?storylink=fb#disqus_thread

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Never Never Land Figures, continued

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8421328035_c7e54787ee(2)The Never Never Land figures that I saw on November 24, 2012 are now for sale at Broadway’s Best Antiques, 742 Broadway, Tacoma in the Antique Row area of Downtown. Of the 85 figures available, 43 have sold in the three weeks they have been available. The most expensive was the Big Bad Wolf at $2,000 and I noticed a coupe of small figures for a couple of hundred. My understanding is that some of these figures are from Tacoma’s Never Never Land and some from a different children’s park in Canada, but that the figures were often switched around for maintenance. Nobody is really sure which ones came from where.

I really enjoyed the store, it was full of some great stuff, not the knick knacks I’ve seen in some other stores.

http://www.broadwaysbestantiques.com/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Broadways-Best-Antiques/100537730018321

LeRoy Jewelers and Happy New Year

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Happy New Year. Dear daughter, her friend and I went downtown to First Night to ring in 2013. The theme is the Year of the Snake and the unofficial mascot seems to be Quetzalcoatl, which is cool since I had just checked out Tacoma’s Quetzalcoatl art in November. http://blog.firsttries.com/quetzalcoatl-mask/

LeRoy Jewelers had a wonderful Quetzalcoatl Mask in their store window. at 940 Broadway and they were welcoming people in from the cold for First Night. Besides wonderful jewelry, they offer arts and crafts in their Art Shop. It is always a pleasure to see their wares.

http://ljewelers.com/

The site for the building had originally been occupied the Far West Lodging House, which was demolished. By 1928 the Metropolitan Chain Stores, Inc. was in place and then in 1961 it was the Lundquist Lilly Men’s Wear, which closed in 1968. LeRoy Jewelers moved into the building in 1970 and the clock on the sidewalk was installed in 1988. LeRoy means king in french.

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Kinokuniya Bookstore for all your Manga needs

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When dear daughter was in middle school, she didn’t want to go anywhere with her parents. The idea of going up to Seattle was abhorrent to her, but we dragged her along anyway. We stopped at Uwajimaya and the Kinokuniya Bookstore (525 S Weller St
Seattle, WA 98104) and she fell for it — hard. Ever since we have been visiting Seattle’s International District at least once a quarter. Today, my now happy travel companion and I went up to Uwajimaya because we were having an udon craving. We can’t go to Uwajimaya without buying those little chocolate mushroom cookie treats and visiting Kinokuniya. She walked away with a present for her friend, a manga and a CD. The store is packed with manga and all types of traditional, Japanese language books (novels, cookbooks, art, history, etc.). We found both The Hobbit and 50 Shades of Grey in Japanese! There is also a large music selection and plenty of adorable stuffed animals, toys, t-shirts, stickers, pens and miscellaneous. Parking is free for up to two hours with store validation.  http://www.kinokuniya.com/us/

By the way, when we got home… she thanked me for taking her!

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Chirp & Co. in the Proctor District

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Chirp & Co. at 3808 North 26th Street, in Tacoma’s Proctor District has been around for 20 years. It’s main emphasis is on wild birds and it offers feeders, food, book and gift items around that theme. There is also a quality pet food selection. Really it has some unusual items and is reasonably price. I walked out with a darling little bird figurine for my window and three different suet square for about $12 altogether.

www.chirpandco.com/

 

Basic Goods

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Basic Goods is a around the corner at 1734 Pacific Avenue in Tacoma’s Museum District. I discovered it because I was out for the first time in a couple of days (darn cold) and went to pick up dear daughter. She begged for a Starbucks drink and I ran down the street in search of a new place.

Basic Goods’ space is about the size of a small garage. On their website they say that they “focus on curating a small collection of well designed, long lasting and useful merchandise”. Really, I liked everything they had from little notebooks to stamp sets to scarfs to thermoses. I picked up a sweet stocking stuffer for dear daughter. Much of their stock can be seen and ordered on their website http://www.basicgoodsco.com/

Santa loves the Aloha Oasis Hawaiian Store

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When Santa needs a break I’m sure he heads to the Aloha Oasis Hawaiian Store at 3011 Sixth Avenue, Tacoma. I stopped into after being stuck in the house for two days with a rotten cold. The store isn’t huge, but it is filled to the brim with all things Hawaiian including Hawaiian shirts, Christmas tree ornaments, candy, lotions, beach towels, bags, leis and trinkets. I left with chocolate covered macadamia nuts, dear husband’s favorite. The business has been going for nine years which is a great success in today’s economy!

Next to Nature Pet Food

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Next to Nature at 1624 Tacoma Avenue, Tacoma, is a splendid pet supply store with friendly helpful staff. Today we stopped by with our two pups and purchased some holiday treats. Our pups were thrilled that the store had cats, though the store cats sensibly wanted nothing to do with them. I hadn’t realized that there are two other Next to Nature locations, one in Edmonds and the other in Seattle.

Per Tacoma Public Library, the building was originally the Coast House Materials Property which was founded in 1900 by Frank McHugh. In part of the 1980s and the 1990s, it was a hardware store.  It closed in 1990. In 2001 Coast House Furnishings
opened and in July Next to Nature Pet Food opened.

http://www.next-to-nature.com/

The Basket Nook

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The Basket Nook at 1007 Martin Luther King, Tacoma, WA is one of the Hilltop’s oldest businesses. It was originally “The Launderette” Tacoma’s first laundry with
individual automatic machines. It opened in 1947. By 1949 the business had evolved into a Laundromat with baskets and eventually it became baskets with gifts and now is primarily gifts. The delightful owner said he had been there for 33 years come January. He must have started really young!

Anyway, I had always thought it was primarily baskets, but the store was full of interesting unique items. I bought a few items for my mom’s Christmas stocking.